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through in superficial terms. People see these and believe that this is the
reality, rather than what they were taught for one hour in a high school
class or in a survey class in college. I think we have to address this kind of
question. This is very serious because you have assaults not only from
within the universities, but from mass culture, from the movie industry,
from television that say, in effect, you don't need school. We can give
you the truth in this new, easy to digest fashion, and it's as true as what
you can learn in school. I find this extremely disturbing.
Wilson Moses: I too was disturbed when I read an article about the
errors in textbooks that left you thinking that the Korean War came to
an end when the atom bomb was used. And if you've got a textbook
company that's owned by another company, that's owned by a record
company which is owned by some French company, then it's possible
they may think of textbooks in the same way they think of pork bellies.
What I see as a problem here, to continue to push on in the populist
analogy, is that we're sort of like the wheat farmers, and we can't get
our ideas to market because the big textbook companies are like the
railroads. We're stuck in a kind of Frank Norris universe, for we can't
get our ideas out there because of various middlemen. College textbooks
are a little different, but the high school textbook industry seems to be a
quite different ball game.
C.
Vann Woodward: I'm a part-time textbook writer myself, and I'm
a little frightened by this. But I realize it's directed mainly to the high
school level. We've had the publishers, the administration, and the stu–
dents blamed for what's happened. I think we're neglecting the faculty. I
think it's they who really determine the curriculum, and this is my con–
cern in this crisis of the university. I don't think that the gross absurdities
and nonsense that's interjected in the curriculum at universities comes
from the students . I think it comes from the faculty, and I realize faculties
are divided up and some have higher standards than others. But where
there is a concerted distortion of this kind, it's faculty in origin, not stu–
dents. I don't believe administrators intervene very much in the matter.
Roger
Kimball:
I think that's true. The administration in many
institutions is implicated, perhaps not so much in devising the curriculum
but certainly in imposing political correctness. It 's really as much the ad–
ministration's doing as the faculty's.
Digby Baltzell: I don't believe we have to organize against it, because
the cutbacks will take care of it all. Yes, Edith, I too believe the buck
stops at the university. The real tragedy is that we don't differentiate be-
